Illume: recap!
Sep. 27th, 2004 01:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aithne[geekery! yep, gaming's started up again.]
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zondrrrah is evil. On the surface, this was a fun little adventure. Underneath, it has some nasty implications for at least one character.
8/23/1583
Akita, setting sail
Dear Yukiko,
As we were arguing this morning, trying to decide which direction to go, a pair of men--gifted with that handsomeness I am beginning to associate with Thrykreen--approached the ship, bearing between them a wooden box as large as a man. It seemed to be a coffin of some sort. They asked permission to come aboard, which was granted, and as they came aboard they asked for "Lord Tadaki", as well as Haku and Funitsu, all of our Ruling Lords.
They set the box down on the boards of the deck and bowed deeply to Tadaki. They said they had been sent from Lord Takumi to bring us General Takashi, who they had uncovered in their midst. They said that the Demonbane thought that we might like to give him the true source and free him of the spirit. He had been transported in a state of suspended animation that we could undo whenever we pleased.
They also said that he was quite susceptible to questioning. The one who said this had a sly smirk on his face, which I took to mean that the man had been tortured for what he knew.
We thanked the Thrykreen and set about moving the box down to the bowels of the ship, where we usually keep prisoners. after a bit of discussion, Funitsu took on the seeming of the Demonbane, and we woke Takashi. On opening his eyes and seeing the person he thought of as the Demonbane, he blanched and moaned. "Ah, gods, just kill me, please. I've told you everything I know."
Patiently, Funitsu said, "Tell me again what you've said. We need to make sure you aren't contradicting yourself." He held up a pair of thumbscrews (dug up from somewhere; this is, of course, a former Scorpion ship) and turned the wheel with a loud squeaking noise. He muttered, "I must tell the guards to oil these better."
The man turned even paler than he had been, and his story spilled out of him. Interesting points he touched on were these:
1. General Takuma is getting ready to attack the Scorpion Clan headquarters. (I muttered a quick prayer to the kami to keep my adoptive clan safe; my fortunes are now linked with theirs. I am not usually a religious woman, and I found this odd after I had done it.)
2. General Kenshin is in a little village named Nagara, east of Tokyo. He is heading up a project called Odyssey, which, he said, was a project to place the spirit that resides in Arenro into a Warresh. Evidently, the three spirits quickly wear out the human bodies that contain them.
(The mind reels with implications, my Lady. Take care of your Lord, as much as you can.)
Lin, Reiko's granddaughter, is helping him with this. The village is lightly guarded with swords but heavily guarded with Crane magicians.
He knew little else. Gryphon asked if he could dose the general with the true source, and took a vial carefully in one clawed hand. He paused and stared at the vial. "Could someone open it for me? Please?"
That accomplished, the evil sprit was driven out of his body and into Tadaki's orb, and Takashi woke. Panda was fetched (she'd absented herself while the others were threatening him with torture) and she looked through her own orb at the general's true form.
It turned out that he'd been changed into a form more attractive--his original form had been shorter and stockier, with short hair. When he was asked if he'd like to be his usual self, he readily assented.
It took a few tries, but we finally figured out that Reiko could dispel the Polymorph spell on him. She employed her usual method of delivering touch spells, and the man looked startled at the tiny shaman who stood on her tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek.
He was looking at her very strangely, but none of us thought anything of it. It was only long after he departed that I thought that he might recognize Reiko as his lord's daughter.
We sent Takashi, along with the pair of Thrykreen who had accompanied him, back to the Phoenix Clan. After a bit of discussion, we decided that the last thing the world needs is for the Dark Son to be incarnated in a Warresh body, and so it's off to Nagara with us. We'll go north and around Aomori, and then down the eastern coast.
Six days, if the wind is with us. Perhaps four, if Haku sits in the control seat and the ship takes on his characteristics.
Panda's dog brought her a fascinating device this evening. It would be interesting to find out which one of the women on board it belongs to, but nobody is owning up to it quite yet. At least, I assume it belongs to a woman...
To bed with me. Tomorrow is another day, indeed.
Love,
Tomika
8/28/1583
eastern coast, near Nagara
The past four days have been relatively uneventful. We sailed around the northern end of the island and south, outpacing the Benevolent by a good distance (they'll catch up with us in a bit).
The only really odd thing I saw was Taura, the formerly male kitsune, standing at the rail, hands clenching it as if she were afraid she were going to fall overboard. Reiko came and led her away, back down into the hold of Shrike, petting her hair and babbling soothingly. That made me wonder--I've barely seen Taura for the past few days. Perhaps something is wrong with her? I am sure the shaman would tell us if there were.
We anchored just off the eastern coast, and began discussing ways to figure out where our enemies were and how to find them. Scrying revealed Lin in a cavern, probably beneath the town, the walls covered with protective runes.
Gryphon became excited about this, and stated that he wanted to bite Lin's fingers and toes off. Reiko said, "Ah, I need to talk to her before you do that, I think."
"Why? She made you sad! Ten toes is an extravagant number! She can lose a few!"
General Kenshin was in two places at once. His body was lying as if dead in a room that had many other runes on the walls, rules for warmth and light and postponement of decomposition. And his soul, evidently, was wandering around in a Warresh body, in a cavern that looks as if it might be near the one Lin was in.
Funitsu volunteered to go scout the town. We were scrying on him with his orb, which he left behind. Soon enough he came to the town, and saw that there were Warresh scattered around it, pretending to be boulders. They're very good at pretending to be boulders, being made out of rock and all.
In the center of town, there was a well with four Warresh around it. Funitsu looked down the well, carefully; about halfway down there was a magical shimmer. Using Air Walk, he went down to look at it, and determined that while nonliving things would pass through the shimmer (so the well was still useful), living things would be transported elsewhere.
He had found the front door into the caverns.
While he was doing this, Reiko went ashore and sat unmoving for a while. Then she began talking to something none of the rest of us could see. This not being unusual behavior for the shaman, we thought nothing of it until she came back and said, "There's a back way into those caverns. It's guarded by a Warresh. Which shouldn't be a problem for the librarian. Right?"
We rested and waited for night. When dusk fell, we and two of the Thrykreen--Jeron and one other, whose name I have not yet learned--made our way into the little village. The hole into the caverns was by the blacksmith's shop, and by his door was a boulder that wasn't a boulder. The librarian ordered it to stand aside. He asked if anyone ever used this entrance, and the Warresh told him that nobody ever did. "This is a thing that you humans would call a 'sewer'. I believe you consider them noisome."
Ugh. Just--ugh. Third in line for the Crane Throne, and I'm crawling through human offal.
Still, the temptation to surprise Lin and Kenshin was great. Greater than our natural aversion to the sewer, evidently. One by one we dropped down into the hole. Funitsu gave the hole a disdainful look and cast Air Walk again, and I convinced him to carry me down with him by the simple expedient of standing on the tops of his feet.
I think that's the closest I've been to my husband since I married him. It was most pleasant. Not quite pleasant enough to make up for the way that the cavern below smelled, though. Reiko gave Funitsu a look and muttered to herself as she waded through the muck, "Damned nobles. Too good to get his boots dirty. Useless."
We followed the flow upstream, and found ourselves eventually at a dead end, beneath what looked like it must have been a communal toileting room. Using a simple expedient of one of the door swords to go about thirteen feet upwards, we emerged in a large tiled room. All of us smelled quite strongly, and we availed ourselves briefly of some water so that approaching enemies would not be warned right away of our presence.
There were barracks attached to the toileting room, and we tiptoed through them, past a pair of sleeping guards. Reiko was leading, as it was her turn to have Detect Magic up, and when we reached a three-way intersection, she pointed down the right fork "There's a magical glow coming from down there, somewhere."
We walked down the corridor, mindful that Kenshin as a Warresh was wandering the halls. We came to a door with many raised sigils on it, and Reiko said that they were definitely Lin's work.
Funitsu called up Kenshin on his scrying orb, which revealed that he was in a three-way intersection, much like the one we had just come through. The shaman pointed out that there was another room on the hallway that didn't have magic on the door, but it did have magic leaking out the edges, as if it contained great energy.
We asked a Thrykreen to open the door, and there was Kenshin's body, just as we'd seen it, still as death. Unwilling to go into the room, Haku simply shot an arrow through the man's head, making his death-like state into real death.
Behind me, Funitsu muttered a very rude word.
The splitting of his orb into two views had collapsed, and the one view was now of Kenshin as a Warresh thundering down the hallway towards us. We could hear him coming, as well as that long, low call that we know is the Warresh call to battle. I heard Reiko say to Jeron, "Don't die, all right?"
(Odd. I had been under the impression she wasn't speaking to him.)
We engaged with Kenshin, the librarian knocking him down on the first try and Haku holding him in an arm lock. Haku is stronger than he appears, it seems. The rest of us took stabs at the Warresh, and Reiko poured a vial of the true source down his throat.
The soul fled--and evidently took Kenshin's soul with it. The Warresh crumbled to dust.
Suddenly, everything was flame. We turned and there was Lin, who honestly didn't look much like Reiko at all. Perhaps the fact that she had a different body than the one she was born in was to blame. The librarian ordered the Warresh to subdue her, but before they reached her, she dropped a crystal on the ground and stepped on it.
All of the Warresh in the corridor died, falling at her feet.
Lin sneered, "You didn't think I wouldn't have a way to take care of these things, did you? Stupid."
Unfortunately, that moment of gloating cost her life. Haku, who had stuck himself to the ceiling, dropped down on her and forced a vial of the true source down her throat. Gryphon really wanted to start nibbling on her toes, but Reiko asked him to forbear until she had a chance to talk to her. The grypon mantled fiercely but settled, crouching and staring at Lin, making clicking noises with his beak.
Unfortunately, Lin refused to talk to Reiko. Reiko wouldn't let the rest of us either kill or torture her to see if she would talk, which left us at an impasse. We could send her to the Demonbane, but what if that's what he'd want?
Haku solved the problem of Reiko balking quite neatly by borrowing the mirror from Panda and hitting Reiko on the head with it. By the time Reiko got back out of the mirror, Haku had slit Lin's throat and Gryphon was merrily feasting on her corpse.
The kitsune looked quite upset as she saw the bloody scene. I volunteered to make the corpse dance, but as there wasn't much there to make move, I settled for reanimating the head.
From somewhere, the kitsune summoned up the steel to talk to the head of her dead granddaughter. The upshot of their conversation was that the plan to capture Reiko originally, before Lin died the first time, was engineered by the Demonbane, who wanted to lock Reiko up in a room by herself forever. Isolating a kitsune is one of the worst tortures you can inflict on them, after all.
The rest--stealing Reiko's memories, binding her powers--was all ordered by the Demonbane, who Lin was in constant contact with even after she became one of Reiko's spirits.
"And joining Arenro? Was that ordered by him as well?"
It was difficult to see, but some odd expression crossed the corpse's face. "I finally found a way to escape my great-grandfather. He controlled me for almost my entire life--and after my death."
Reiko asked no more questions. I asked her, as the final question, how one would get into her room. Her answer was, "Simple. Just say my grandmother's true name--the one she was given at birth."
We looked at Reiko, eyebrows raised. She sighed, and turned to the door. "Takumi Reiko." The door clicked and swung open.
It should have been an unalloyed victory. We emerged mostly unscathed, with two enemies dust, and the treasures of Lin's room to plunder. And for most of us, it was.
I think, for the kitsune, the day was altogether different. I saw her looking down on the head of her granddaughter, hair soaked with blood, seemingly torn between pain and elation. Lin was, after all, her granddaughter. All things considered, she was not a very good granddaughter, but we love even the reprobates in our families.
I saw, before we destroyed the last of Lin's body, Reiko kneel and take a lock of Lin's hair. Sentimental creatures, kitsune are.
I think that was sentiment, at least.
I hope you're well, Yukiko. Do send a message when you have a chance--we are all anxious about your well-being.
With great affection,
Tomika
Quotes:
*squeak squeak squeak*
--thumbscrews, as Funitsu subtly threatens Takashi
"Hey, Reiko, we have an extra coffin for the next time you go into battle!"
--Gryphon
"You all kitted out, Hiroshi?"
"I've got a great bloody sword, that's all I need!"
"And a butt flap!"
--Panda and Hiroshi
"I am flush with a sense of adventure!"
--Panda, about our adventure in the sewers.
"How many times have I come close to death because I went up and played with people?"
"Yes, but that was real life."
--Ray and Laura
"Witch heads, witch heads, roly poly witch heads..."
--Derek
"She has ten toes, right? That's an extravagant number! She won't miss a few."
--Gryphon
zondrrrah is evil. On the surface, this was a fun little adventure. Underneath, it has some nasty implications for at least one character.8/23/1583
Akita, setting sail
Dear Yukiko,
As we were arguing this morning, trying to decide which direction to go, a pair of men--gifted with that handsomeness I am beginning to associate with Thrykreen--approached the ship, bearing between them a wooden box as large as a man. It seemed to be a coffin of some sort. They asked permission to come aboard, which was granted, and as they came aboard they asked for "Lord Tadaki", as well as Haku and Funitsu, all of our Ruling Lords.
They set the box down on the boards of the deck and bowed deeply to Tadaki. They said they had been sent from Lord Takumi to bring us General Takashi, who they had uncovered in their midst. They said that the Demonbane thought that we might like to give him the true source and free him of the spirit. He had been transported in a state of suspended animation that we could undo whenever we pleased.
They also said that he was quite susceptible to questioning. The one who said this had a sly smirk on his face, which I took to mean that the man had been tortured for what he knew.
We thanked the Thrykreen and set about moving the box down to the bowels of the ship, where we usually keep prisoners. after a bit of discussion, Funitsu took on the seeming of the Demonbane, and we woke Takashi. On opening his eyes and seeing the person he thought of as the Demonbane, he blanched and moaned. "Ah, gods, just kill me, please. I've told you everything I know."
Patiently, Funitsu said, "Tell me again what you've said. We need to make sure you aren't contradicting yourself." He held up a pair of thumbscrews (dug up from somewhere; this is, of course, a former Scorpion ship) and turned the wheel with a loud squeaking noise. He muttered, "I must tell the guards to oil these better."
The man turned even paler than he had been, and his story spilled out of him. Interesting points he touched on were these:
1. General Takuma is getting ready to attack the Scorpion Clan headquarters. (I muttered a quick prayer to the kami to keep my adoptive clan safe; my fortunes are now linked with theirs. I am not usually a religious woman, and I found this odd after I had done it.)
2. General Kenshin is in a little village named Nagara, east of Tokyo. He is heading up a project called Odyssey, which, he said, was a project to place the spirit that resides in Arenro into a Warresh. Evidently, the three spirits quickly wear out the human bodies that contain them.
(The mind reels with implications, my Lady. Take care of your Lord, as much as you can.)
Lin, Reiko's granddaughter, is helping him with this. The village is lightly guarded with swords but heavily guarded with Crane magicians.
He knew little else. Gryphon asked if he could dose the general with the true source, and took a vial carefully in one clawed hand. He paused and stared at the vial. "Could someone open it for me? Please?"
That accomplished, the evil sprit was driven out of his body and into Tadaki's orb, and Takashi woke. Panda was fetched (she'd absented herself while the others were threatening him with torture) and she looked through her own orb at the general's true form.
It turned out that he'd been changed into a form more attractive--his original form had been shorter and stockier, with short hair. When he was asked if he'd like to be his usual self, he readily assented.
It took a few tries, but we finally figured out that Reiko could dispel the Polymorph spell on him. She employed her usual method of delivering touch spells, and the man looked startled at the tiny shaman who stood on her tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek.
He was looking at her very strangely, but none of us thought anything of it. It was only long after he departed that I thought that he might recognize Reiko as his lord's daughter.
We sent Takashi, along with the pair of Thrykreen who had accompanied him, back to the Phoenix Clan. After a bit of discussion, we decided that the last thing the world needs is for the Dark Son to be incarnated in a Warresh body, and so it's off to Nagara with us. We'll go north and around Aomori, and then down the eastern coast.
Six days, if the wind is with us. Perhaps four, if Haku sits in the control seat and the ship takes on his characteristics.
Panda's dog brought her a fascinating device this evening. It would be interesting to find out which one of the women on board it belongs to, but nobody is owning up to it quite yet. At least, I assume it belongs to a woman...
To bed with me. Tomorrow is another day, indeed.
Love,
Tomika
8/28/1583
eastern coast, near Nagara
The past four days have been relatively uneventful. We sailed around the northern end of the island and south, outpacing the Benevolent by a good distance (they'll catch up with us in a bit).
The only really odd thing I saw was Taura, the formerly male kitsune, standing at the rail, hands clenching it as if she were afraid she were going to fall overboard. Reiko came and led her away, back down into the hold of Shrike, petting her hair and babbling soothingly. That made me wonder--I've barely seen Taura for the past few days. Perhaps something is wrong with her? I am sure the shaman would tell us if there were.
We anchored just off the eastern coast, and began discussing ways to figure out where our enemies were and how to find them. Scrying revealed Lin in a cavern, probably beneath the town, the walls covered with protective runes.
Gryphon became excited about this, and stated that he wanted to bite Lin's fingers and toes off. Reiko said, "Ah, I need to talk to her before you do that, I think."
"Why? She made you sad! Ten toes is an extravagant number! She can lose a few!"
General Kenshin was in two places at once. His body was lying as if dead in a room that had many other runes on the walls, rules for warmth and light and postponement of decomposition. And his soul, evidently, was wandering around in a Warresh body, in a cavern that looks as if it might be near the one Lin was in.
Funitsu volunteered to go scout the town. We were scrying on him with his orb, which he left behind. Soon enough he came to the town, and saw that there were Warresh scattered around it, pretending to be boulders. They're very good at pretending to be boulders, being made out of rock and all.
In the center of town, there was a well with four Warresh around it. Funitsu looked down the well, carefully; about halfway down there was a magical shimmer. Using Air Walk, he went down to look at it, and determined that while nonliving things would pass through the shimmer (so the well was still useful), living things would be transported elsewhere.
He had found the front door into the caverns.
While he was doing this, Reiko went ashore and sat unmoving for a while. Then she began talking to something none of the rest of us could see. This not being unusual behavior for the shaman, we thought nothing of it until she came back and said, "There's a back way into those caverns. It's guarded by a Warresh. Which shouldn't be a problem for the librarian. Right?"
We rested and waited for night. When dusk fell, we and two of the Thrykreen--Jeron and one other, whose name I have not yet learned--made our way into the little village. The hole into the caverns was by the blacksmith's shop, and by his door was a boulder that wasn't a boulder. The librarian ordered it to stand aside. He asked if anyone ever used this entrance, and the Warresh told him that nobody ever did. "This is a thing that you humans would call a 'sewer'. I believe you consider them noisome."
Ugh. Just--ugh. Third in line for the Crane Throne, and I'm crawling through human offal.
Still, the temptation to surprise Lin and Kenshin was great. Greater than our natural aversion to the sewer, evidently. One by one we dropped down into the hole. Funitsu gave the hole a disdainful look and cast Air Walk again, and I convinced him to carry me down with him by the simple expedient of standing on the tops of his feet.
I think that's the closest I've been to my husband since I married him. It was most pleasant. Not quite pleasant enough to make up for the way that the cavern below smelled, though. Reiko gave Funitsu a look and muttered to herself as she waded through the muck, "Damned nobles. Too good to get his boots dirty. Useless."
We followed the flow upstream, and found ourselves eventually at a dead end, beneath what looked like it must have been a communal toileting room. Using a simple expedient of one of the door swords to go about thirteen feet upwards, we emerged in a large tiled room. All of us smelled quite strongly, and we availed ourselves briefly of some water so that approaching enemies would not be warned right away of our presence.
There were barracks attached to the toileting room, and we tiptoed through them, past a pair of sleeping guards. Reiko was leading, as it was her turn to have Detect Magic up, and when we reached a three-way intersection, she pointed down the right fork "There's a magical glow coming from down there, somewhere."
We walked down the corridor, mindful that Kenshin as a Warresh was wandering the halls. We came to a door with many raised sigils on it, and Reiko said that they were definitely Lin's work.
Funitsu called up Kenshin on his scrying orb, which revealed that he was in a three-way intersection, much like the one we had just come through. The shaman pointed out that there was another room on the hallway that didn't have magic on the door, but it did have magic leaking out the edges, as if it contained great energy.
We asked a Thrykreen to open the door, and there was Kenshin's body, just as we'd seen it, still as death. Unwilling to go into the room, Haku simply shot an arrow through the man's head, making his death-like state into real death.
Behind me, Funitsu muttered a very rude word.
The splitting of his orb into two views had collapsed, and the one view was now of Kenshin as a Warresh thundering down the hallway towards us. We could hear him coming, as well as that long, low call that we know is the Warresh call to battle. I heard Reiko say to Jeron, "Don't die, all right?"
(Odd. I had been under the impression she wasn't speaking to him.)
We engaged with Kenshin, the librarian knocking him down on the first try and Haku holding him in an arm lock. Haku is stronger than he appears, it seems. The rest of us took stabs at the Warresh, and Reiko poured a vial of the true source down his throat.
The soul fled--and evidently took Kenshin's soul with it. The Warresh crumbled to dust.
Suddenly, everything was flame. We turned and there was Lin, who honestly didn't look much like Reiko at all. Perhaps the fact that she had a different body than the one she was born in was to blame. The librarian ordered the Warresh to subdue her, but before they reached her, she dropped a crystal on the ground and stepped on it.
All of the Warresh in the corridor died, falling at her feet.
Lin sneered, "You didn't think I wouldn't have a way to take care of these things, did you? Stupid."
Unfortunately, that moment of gloating cost her life. Haku, who had stuck himself to the ceiling, dropped down on her and forced a vial of the true source down her throat. Gryphon really wanted to start nibbling on her toes, but Reiko asked him to forbear until she had a chance to talk to her. The grypon mantled fiercely but settled, crouching and staring at Lin, making clicking noises with his beak.
Unfortunately, Lin refused to talk to Reiko. Reiko wouldn't let the rest of us either kill or torture her to see if she would talk, which left us at an impasse. We could send her to the Demonbane, but what if that's what he'd want?
Haku solved the problem of Reiko balking quite neatly by borrowing the mirror from Panda and hitting Reiko on the head with it. By the time Reiko got back out of the mirror, Haku had slit Lin's throat and Gryphon was merrily feasting on her corpse.
The kitsune looked quite upset as she saw the bloody scene. I volunteered to make the corpse dance, but as there wasn't much there to make move, I settled for reanimating the head.
From somewhere, the kitsune summoned up the steel to talk to the head of her dead granddaughter. The upshot of their conversation was that the plan to capture Reiko originally, before Lin died the first time, was engineered by the Demonbane, who wanted to lock Reiko up in a room by herself forever. Isolating a kitsune is one of the worst tortures you can inflict on them, after all.
The rest--stealing Reiko's memories, binding her powers--was all ordered by the Demonbane, who Lin was in constant contact with even after she became one of Reiko's spirits.
"And joining Arenro? Was that ordered by him as well?"
It was difficult to see, but some odd expression crossed the corpse's face. "I finally found a way to escape my great-grandfather. He controlled me for almost my entire life--and after my death."
Reiko asked no more questions. I asked her, as the final question, how one would get into her room. Her answer was, "Simple. Just say my grandmother's true name--the one she was given at birth."
We looked at Reiko, eyebrows raised. She sighed, and turned to the door. "Takumi Reiko." The door clicked and swung open.
It should have been an unalloyed victory. We emerged mostly unscathed, with two enemies dust, and the treasures of Lin's room to plunder. And for most of us, it was.
I think, for the kitsune, the day was altogether different. I saw her looking down on the head of her granddaughter, hair soaked with blood, seemingly torn between pain and elation. Lin was, after all, her granddaughter. All things considered, she was not a very good granddaughter, but we love even the reprobates in our families.
I saw, before we destroyed the last of Lin's body, Reiko kneel and take a lock of Lin's hair. Sentimental creatures, kitsune are.
I think that was sentiment, at least.
I hope you're well, Yukiko. Do send a message when you have a chance--we are all anxious about your well-being.
With great affection,
Tomika
Quotes:
*squeak squeak squeak*
--thumbscrews, as Funitsu subtly threatens Takashi
"Hey, Reiko, we have an extra coffin for the next time you go into battle!"
--Gryphon
"You all kitted out, Hiroshi?"
"I've got a great bloody sword, that's all I need!"
"And a butt flap!"
--Panda and Hiroshi
"I am flush with a sense of adventure!"
--Panda, about our adventure in the sewers.
"How many times have I come close to death because I went up and played with people?"
"Yes, but that was real life."
--Ray and Laura
"Witch heads, witch heads, roly poly witch heads..."
--Derek
"She has ten toes, right? That's an extravagant number! She won't miss a few."
--Gryphon
